Weaponized Nerd Rage lived up to his name and delivered a quality rant taking a certain quivering shitweasel to task. [9 mins]

Honestly Ethan van Sciver has won me over as fan in the recent weeks and for much the same reasons that Jon Del Arroz did. He’s simply so honest, passionate and friendly that any sane person walks away from the conversation with a smile on their face.

I was torn on whether or not to write this piece. I’ve increasingly found myself doing a great deal of Culture War commentary. Right now the culture war is raging hottest among the comic stands and racks upon racks of zombie eyed funko pops.

While I find the culture war aspect deeply interesting and since I do make it a point to have at least basic understanding of what is going on in the rest of geekdom, I am not a comics guy.

Seriously people I own two comics (and one of those I impulse bought last week, just to see how much of a story can you tell in a hundred panels.) Most of what I knew about comics before 2015 was learnt against my will.

This gives me a bit of a detached view of ComicsGate and related topics. On one hand because comics is such small concentrated aspect of the War for the Heart of Geekdom it’s very easy for me to pick out elements of the wider culture war without getting personally and emotionally involved. On the other hand many of my friends (and readers) do enjoy comics and I don’t like to see my friends in pain. And there is plenty of pain in the modern comics world. We are beginning to see the first signs of the SJWs being driven out of territory that once thought secure, truly a beautiful sight. The SJWs of course are lashing out frantically but that’s more funny than threatening.

The recent attacks on Ethan van Sciver and Jon Malin are in part an act of desperation as the SJWs lodged in the comics industry are beginning to sense just how vulnerable they are.

The entire comic industry is in very bad shape and it becoming increasingly obvious to everyone just who is to blame. The books simply aren’t selling at a time when America hasn’t been so enamoured with superheroes since GI’s were reading Captain America in the trenches. How could this be? Only the dark magic of SJW convergence can explain this state of affairs. Luckily brave heroes are rising to the occasion to do something about it.

Diversity and Comics reviewing the latest death spasms in the Comic twittersphere. [12mins]

He gets to the to point around the six minute mark. Also there’s a lot of cringe here.

I didn’t feel the need to talk about the Will Calligan incident as others in my internet friendosphere already had the bases covered but truly that was a perfect storm event and the anti-SJW forces spotted a target of opportunity and then PROCEEDED TO NUKE IT FROM ORBIT

It is very difficult to overstate just how much of a win the Will Calligan kickstarter was for Arkhaven. Possibly even a bigger win the initial Alt*Hero one. Again the suspicions of Divine timing begins to arise. The SJWs couldn’t be doing more to boost Arkhaven’s chances of success if they were directly on the Supreme Dark Lord’s payroll.

Okay a quick glossary for people who aren’t daily readers of Vox Day’s blog like I am.

Alt*Hero: That kickstarter comic thing that pissed in everyone’s cornflakes and got this whole thing going. Intended to be the main showcase series for Arkhaven comics. Note that by it’s very nature Alt*Hero will be by necessity highly political.

Arkhaven Comics: This is the imprint that Castilia House is going to use for comics that they are going to make themselves in house.

Avalon: A Chuck Dixon lead series that is going to set in the same universe as Alt*Hero. Avalon will be focused on street level crime fighting on noticeably less political than the flagship series.

Dark Legion: A secondary imprint for comics Castilia House is ‘indirectly’ publishing. Basically an indie comic that is using CH is a publishing outlet while retaining creative control.

Vox Day giving an update (Jan 28th) on various Arkhaven projects [16 mins]

More importantly he shows off an example of the 24 page ‘single issue’ comic with a trade paperback cover that had me so confused.

Vox also discusses briefly how all Arkhaven/Dark Legion comics will be available in Kindle unlimited and that this is a key part of their distribution plan.

The other part of the plan is far more intriguing (if at the moment very secretive) those $2.99 single issue comics are going to be available to local comic stores through a currently unnamed distribution company (Distributor X?) in effect breaking the current monopoly that be been in force since 1997.

Alt*Hero will not ‘save the comics industry’ but it is the second and third order side effects that are happening around the Alt*Hero project that are going to breathe new life into a nearly dead industry.

First of all if Arkhaven can delivery on even half of what has been promised how are the other independent comic creators going to react? Are they going to curl up in a ball and crawl into the nearest safe space, or are they going to get “high energy” and increase their output and creativity. It doesn’t even matter whether they are mad at Vox Day for invading their turf. Energy is energy and the Arkhaven disruption will breathe new life into the fringe creators. Culture war after all requires culture and the more non-SJW comics being made the better.

The second aspect depends on the combination of Distributor X and the Dark Legion imprint opening up the comic industry and making it easier for physical books to get to market. Once local comic store owners get used to ordering from a second distributor, things should begin to snowball. Diamond will respond to the new competition (by all accounts they are a very smart company,) and they will probably be forced to start treating the store owners better.

And if more and more small indy publishers start switching to Distributor X or pressing Diamond for better deals… well again things will snowball quickly.

Of course this all depends on there still being local comic stores around in 2019.

It’s a well known fact that movie critics and general audience members look for completely different things in a movie. So having a large difference between the scores given by the critics and those given by the fans is not unusual. However for some reason people seem to be very touchy about critics giving the latest Star Wars movie a rating about 93 while the general audience rating is hovering around the high 50s. A forty point difference is a bit much and mere shilling and SOCJUS does not completely explain such a huge difference.

WCBS on the excuses for the critic / audience divide.

Yes the critics really are trying to deflect away the ratings split but claiming that mean people on the internet are being mean. The New Ghostbusters movie and Justice League are given as examples of a critic / audience split.

Welcome to JediGate. Yes we’ve been here before. Just get your passport stamped and your bags through customs. Don’t forget to tip the Wookie either.

And NO I DIDN’T LIKE THE MOVIE (1) Nor did anyone in the PulpRev or Superversive SF circles (as far as I can tell.)

but some people did like the movie… and this must be investigated further.

Hearing someone I know say he liked The Last Jedi is like finding out he's a cultist. Or a pod person.

There’s no real need to explain why thus objectively bad movie isn’t resonating with general audiences and the reasons why Star Wars Fans hate The Last Jedi back just as much as the movie hates them have already been explored in depth and style.

What therefore remains to be explained is why is there a small but noticeable group of people who did enjoy this terrible abomination of a movie? Why did the pod people like The Last Jedi?

First of all we can discount the SJW elements who are praising Soy Wars: Episode Hate (2) as they have no actual opinions of their own and are simply going along with the groupthink.

Professional shills and movie critics can also be discounted. Even those that didn’t take the Mouse Money are too terrified of being blacklisted in a Disney controlled entertainment industry.

This leaves a very distinct group of people: Movie Buffs and Generic Pop Culture Geeks.

You know who I’m talking about…

These are the Jack of All Trades Geeks who are not hardcore fans of any one thing but focus on keeping up with pop culture and current happenings. They typically learn enough to have a five minute conversation about virtually any geek fandom. These are the Shallow Geeks (3). They try to have fun every where they can and don’t get too tied into any one thing.

They also WATCH A LOT OF MOVIES

In fact the only difference between a Shallow Geek and a Professional Movie Critic is that the Shallow Geek typically has a real job and may have read several non-Harry Potter books (4).

Again you know who I’m talking about.

So why do hardcore movie watchers enjoy Star Wars: The Last Jedi?

Well we could ask them but none of them seem to be able to give a full answer.

The best responses involve vague worded variations on, “It was something different. It was unexpected.”

So let’s work from that. Something about this movie was different from all the other movies our Pod Person has recently watched.

For that we have to go back the original George Lucas Star Wars and what did George Lucas famously do? He made very heavy use of Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth theories

George Lucas did other things but this is what the Hollywood types latched onto and very quickly hack screenwriters begin to incorporate elements of A Hero With A Thousand Faces into practically every Hollywood movie… and things have gotten to the point that for all practical effects modern movies and entertainment all have pretty much the same plot being told over and over again with only the names changed.

Joseph Campbell’s work is not invalid but it has been overused so much that is has become a cancerous tumour on the face of modern storytelling.

There are other ways to tell a story than the standard three act set.

Your blue-pilled, Rick and Morty loving, coworker in the next cubicle is technically correct. (5) Star Wars: The Last Jedi actually did something completely different. A HOLLYWOOD MOVIE DIRECTLY SHAT UPON THE JOSEPH CAMPBELL MONOMYTH.

And when someone who watches a lot of movies (most of which have the same plot timing) they immediately notice that something is new and different even if they can’t quite put their finger on it.

Of course attacking the monomyth is simply a prerequisite to shitting on and destroying the entire rest of the Star Wars mythos (6) but that’s another topic entirely.

But at least we now have an explanation for the critics reaction and the ratings split. Movie critics were so overjoyed by the subversion of the Monomyth that they subconsciously forgave the sins of an otherwise terrible movie. The mass audience on the other hand did not.

End Notes:

1 Among other things as a Space Navy League loyalist I found the tactics portrayed in The Last Jedi to so stupid and nonsensical that I took it as a personal insult.

2 Soy Wars: as in all the meat has been removed and replaced with filler. Also T-Levels are dropping at an alarming level.

3 As opposed to the Deep Geek who specializes in a small number of niche hobbies and gains mastery over them. Shallow Geeks are the guys you see on The Big Bang Theory. Deep Geeks are the guys discussing the differences between Dominions 4 and 5 and whether or not a blessed Jotun Scout Rush is a viable strategy with the new commander recruiting mechanics.

4 Not always a sure thing.

5 The best kind of correct.

6 Hollywood never understood Star Wars or why people enjoyed those movies. I continue to hold that the real genius of Star Wars was having a setting that was epic (galaxy spanning) in scale but where one man in a starfighter could make a difference. Of course you need actual heroic characters for that.

Other Links:

Bradford C.Walker further explains what he means by Narrative Warfare.

A little on the cringeworthy side but he’s making a lot of good points here. Forcing real world topical politics into works of fiction completely ruins them.

It also causes them to age very rapidly. Think of a space marines novel from 1990 where the main villain is a Saddam Hussein stand in (I know one exists.) That’s bad enough but at least there’s some sort of story there and SPACEMERICA FUCK YES!!! is a tried and tested staple of military science fiction.

The real cringe comes from when a fictional society just so happens to be having the exact same problems as the modern world despite it being the year 4273 and most of the conflict taking place on the ice moon Carride in the New Fresco system. Our stronk female character must spread progressive values to the horribly backwards ice miners who still refuse to believe in more than two genders. This is of course is in addition to fending off an invading army of Orange Hitler Clones…

There really is only so much as this you can take before you simply turn off the television or toss the book in the trash.

Message fiction sucks even when you agree with the message. For example I used to get very angry about the ‘straw liberals’ you constantly see in military science fiction. There is always somebody who wants to negotiate with Face-Eating Giant Space Spiders*…

And then I starting encountering the blue checkmark mafia on Twitter and learnt that yes American Journalists really do think actually like those characters in those novels.

…and I think that’s another rant for another time.

So? How do I go about handling politics in my writing?

Let’s start with the dirty little secret of this horribly wwwwwwacist right wing blog. I’m not actually THAT rightwing. Certainly not compared to the majority of my internet friends who seem to sleep with a MANPAD under their Confederate flag pillow and cosplay as the Shadow solely as an excuse to carry an extra pair of .45s.

The central topic of the Breyland stories is the question “what does it mean to be a nation?” This will not be the theme or main point of every story I write in that universe but it will be a constant presence in the background and intelligent self-aware characters will have to think about it. Breyland is cursed with a very serious fuzzy borders problem as their cultural and economic influence far exceeds their Space Navy’s ability to project power and defend those borders.

All of the questions I’ve had to ask myself while worldbuilding about culture, religion, race, the difference between Nation and Empire… keep leading me towards what is going to be a very right-friendly setting. Which is very interesting as I set a lot of the details down long before I was red-pilled.

Picking up those notes years later and thinking through the consequences of those details and the enormous potential for ethnic and religious conflict littered all over the place has been an awful lot of fun. For example I made the main protagonist culture intolerant of male homosexuality as I wanted to give them a flaw rather than risk letting them become complete Mary Sues. Years later hindsight is making that defining flaw look more and more like a virtue, at least in some circles.

There has been a lot of false starts in the last couple of years as I dig around in this mess for a story to tell but I seem to be making at least some head way. Slow progress is still progress.

So while there is going to be a great deal of politics in the Breylandverse stories I will do my best to make them as non-contemporary as possible and focus on making the issues of direct and logical consequence to the characters who are stuck weathering the storm (or when fortune smiles on them being the storm.)

Yes I will take the occasional shot at the Far Left but this is a setting where Communists get thrown out of helicopters every couple of decades just to keep the universities in line**. The Breyland military also finds itself fighting planetary nationalists just as often as they find themselves chasing down jungle Communists.

And as always I will let the reader judge the characters rather than simply preach down from an ideological pulpit.

Which just so happens to be the exact opposite approach mainstream science fiction like Star Trek Discovery is taking.

*As the Feegs prefer to play with their food they are usually quite happy to “negotiate.” Also leftist human females tend to be fatter than right-leaning human females and thus more delicious.

** A second exception I’m going to allow myself is the Special Intelligence Service who are basically a bunch of Alt-Right Shitlords… and yes some of them are Fake Nazis… others are actual Nazis.. just enough of them to keep things interesting.

***Disclaimer: FEGSS do not actually appear in the Breylandverse. This was completely unplanned rant and I mixed my metaphors. But don’t worry The Feegs are patient and cunning; they will appear somewhere sometime and when you least expect it.

Most if not all social, cultural or political movements tend to take the form of a youthful rebellion to what the previous generation held as their standard; an over-correction to the errors that generation made or a panicked attempt to avoid a repeat of a recent tragedy. French Humanism for example came about as a direct result of the French Wars of Religion and the horror that resulted from christian fighting christian over small matters of heresy.

So what will be the reaction to the curse that is Pink Slime Science Fiction? The obvious answer would be some form of self-consciously anti-SJW science fiction. The Pulp Revolution does contain some elements of this as “Write whatever the fuck you want, hombre. Just don’t make it boring.” is in fact quite opposite an mantra from anything Tor books would choose to associate with. The problem here is that new movements tend to overreact when the pendulum swings. So what I expect to see is something I for the lack of a better term am, dubbing Overedgy SF; where offending and mocking the progressive gatekeepers of the previous era is front and center.

Now we are already seeing quite a bit of this but its mostly limited to what are clearly parody stories but if an Overedgy SF movement actually begins in earnest we can expect to see some fairly serious works purposely offend and directly attack the progressive sacred cows at every beat. Instead of virtue signalling these authors will be vice signalling. Sadly this too will be a form of message fiction and detrimental to storytelling but we should as least see some better dialogue than your typical John Scalzi novel.

Even if authors don’t want to be shitlords there is going to be a temptation to work in offensive or questionable content that the author wasn’t originally going to go anywhere near simply to kick the SJW gatekeepers while they are down. Every action in nerd culture produces an equal and opposite (if slightly more autistic) reaction and the CHORFs have had their cold clammy hands on the vitals of Speculative fiction for far too long for fiction lovers to simply let them walk away unscathed.

So expect we’ll see a five to ten year literary wave of Overedgy SF before it gets boring and played out. While it should an absolute blast to read after the creative drought of the last few decades it is important to note that Overedgy books are not likely to age well.

And what will I do? Not sure? While there is no way I can keep politics out of my writing I decided a long time ago that is would be best to let the reader make the judgement call and not simply preach right and wrong to them… that said I never expected to write a chapter about throwing Communists out of a helicopter and yet here we are.

Interestingly the rest of the book will probably be quite apolitical but this does fit into the bipolar madness that is the Beautiful Terror.

Also there is the videogame aspect in that if a gamer has to stare at a character’s butt for hours at a time it helps if that butt belongs to a hot chick rather than a fat hairy dude in a fedora. (Author inserts are never good.)

Jimfear138 preaches the gospel truth about what makes a good Sci-fi movie

Insensitivity readers might just be a growth industry; especially if I’m right about the rise of Overedgy science fiction. You just can’t think of ways to offend everybody without an ever bigger Shitlord watching your back and pointing out missed opportunities to drive the knife in just a little deeper.

This sounds like very good news. A much more promising future than putting windmills in soyfields to power our iSlavecollars.

You will see mentions of thorium reactors in the Breyland stories as it’s one of the few neearhorizon technologies that I’m actually excited about. Big game changer and a lot closer than practical fusion.

Just a quick piece highlighting a great video and a few random thoughts.

I’ve kept fairly quiet on Charlotteville and the related aftermath but I think I’ve got a fairly good idea what happened and I’m very thankfully that it wasn’t worse. In fact it looks like the whole thing is going to backfire on the Left as they are desperately overreaching in the wake of “victory” and pissing off the normies in the process.

Trumpslide 2020? We may need to start talking about Bannon The Barbarian 2024.

A good solid breakdown of the aftermath and the long term results. [11 Mins]

The Establishment Left spent a lot of time and effort setting up the Unite The Right rally and in the end all they really accomplished was making Richard Spencer look like a naive attention seeking clown. This is something we already knew but it seems that some people needed to be reminded of that fact. Zman made a brilliant point in one of his posts that the smart thing to do after the tiki torch nightmarch would have been to simply go home and leave the police and the local Democrats having to explain the Antifa and BLM riots that would have occurred regardless of whether or not there were any Fake Nazis to throw bottles of urine at or not.*

Some of the more observant readers might have noticed that I’m using the tag or term Alt-West a lot more often and Alt-Right less and less. I just find it a better description of my actual position, even if, the term is little baffling to people who don’t already read Vox Populi.

I’ll have to do a follow up by what I mean by all that but I simply don’t talk to The Right Stuff Crowd and aside from a couple of individuals don’t really want anything to do with them. The Alt-West is the way forward. While there’s a lot of angry young men who need to vent and who need to be told, “that’s okay to be white, you have nothing to be ashamed about” standing around and screaming “GAS THE KIKES! BEFORE THE DARKIES STEAL OUR BIKES!!!” is not very productive and will not save our nations. Vent your anger, purge your white guilt and then grab your tools and get to work. There’s plenty of shit to do and not enough hands to do it. Don’t bitch about not being able to do something either. FIND SOMETHING YOU CAN DO AND FUCKING DO IT!!!

But that’s another rant for another day.

Together. We’ll LARPwar another day but first we must see that there will be another day for LARPing. Besides how else are going to Crusade while listening to Pagan Death Metal?

Nope nothing suspicious here [5 mins]

A very quick summery of three suspicious things already noted about the Unite the Right rally.

99% Sure this is just some idiot from /pol/ doing a PSYOP. That or Jack Black has really let himself go.

I can totally see this happening. Would likely be followed up with let’s say… OPShellgame where we mix in the occasionally real rally in order to keep them going after the fake decoy rallies.

I lot of people still prefer the term Ctrl-Left but the God-Emperor has made his will clear.

*Final Thought: Do the crisis actors pretending to be Nazis get paid more than the regular guys? Maybe they get an extra bratwurst or something?